1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for canceling interference of a neighbor cell in a wireless communication system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for canceling neighbor cell interference according to whether a neighbor cell interference signal is generated in the wireless communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A wireless communication system shares frequency resources between cells to raise frequency resource utilization. When cells of the wireless communication system share frequency resources, the wireless communication system is subject to performance degradation due to neighbor cell interference. In the wireless communication system, the performance degradation caused by neighbor cell interference seriously affects a terminal traveling in a cell boundary. Therefore, it is necessary for the wireless communication system to cancel the neighbor cell interference to mitigate performance degradation.
In order to cancel neighbor cell interference, the terminal in the wireless communication system should have knowledge of information relating to the interfering neighbor cell and Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) format information of an interference signal received from the neighbor cell.
For example, the terminal can acquire the neighbor cell information while searching for candidate cells for active set management. The terminal can acquire the MCS format information of the interference signal by decoding a signal received through a control channel of the interfering neighbor cell. Herein, the active set indicates a set of neighbor cells to which the terminal can hand over.
As discussed above, the terminal of the wireless communication system decodes the signal received through the control channel of the neighbor cell to acquire the MCS format information of the interference signal. However, when the terminal decodes the signal received through the control channel of the neighbor cell while communicating with a serving cell, the decoding operation imposes a considerable burden on the terminal.